Lee Stensness: Win or lose, French emotions run high in the crying game

The way the French or the All Blacks react to winning or losing this morning's test will be a reflection of their respective rugby cultures. I'm referring to the reaction of the players, not the public or the media which similarly tend to overreact in both countries.

French rugby players certainly don't adhere to the sentiment of words of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling which goes along the lines of: "If you can meet with triumph and disaster, And treat those two impostors just the same you'll be a Man, my son." Emotions tend to run high or to extreme whichever impostor is entertained.

For New Zealand rugby teams and players, those sentiments don't strictly apply but, win or lose, the unwritten rules dictate that you should not overreact. If your team wins, don't over-celebrate especially in public. If you lose, it's not the end of the world, except on talkback radio. That's the NZ rugby way, not too much emotion. For French teams this is not the case.

To say they react to victory and defeat differently is an understatement. However, there is one consistent theme that runs through both winning and losing for a French team, crying. It is sure to accompany either, especially when the stakes are high, but often simply playing at home is enough.

The crying can also be before the game. Strangely, it seemed the bigger and meaner the player, the higher the propensity to cry before a game, props being the worst. I have seen players cry before matches in New Zealand but not as often as in France.

After the match, when they win, there is crying for the camera to see. When they lose, there is crying for the coach to see.

The atmosphere in the changing rooms after a significant victory, like the French Club final I won with Toulouse in 1999, is one of chaos. It seems every man and his dog is allowed in to hang out and soak it up. There are media everywhere and they stay as long as they like but the French players seem to enjoy hamming it up for the camera, so it suits everyone.

Sometimes the coaches ham it up too. After an important quarter-final victory away against Agen, our coach was about to be interviewed in the changing rooms by a television crew so he took his shirt off. Yes, off. It was a hot day and he was in good shape for a 45-year-old, as he used to constantly point out to me (sit ups and cycling, he reckoned) but... still.

In New Zealand when your team wins a match of importance, it is far more controlled. The players like their space to enjoy the moment with the boys and the team as a whole.

It is after the players leave the privacy of the changing rooms that things get a bit blurry.